Awful conditions, but my mate got his first bass on a creature bait, lovely fish as well

Talk about getting a kicking from the weather! I’ve known Del for years and when he comes to stay he’s basically part of our family. We all went out for supper on Monday evening to celebrate my youngest girl’s 19th birthday - how is that possible! - and of course we have been trying to find a few bass in amongst all this bad weather………….

With one of the principal aims of these few days being to find Del a bass or two on a creature bait. He was never going to struggle with bumping stuff along the bottom and then translating all those taps and knocks into when you get a bass hit and need to strike it. Wrasse fishing with plastics is his main fishing back home on the stunning Isles of Scilly, and if you know anything about wrassing on lures and creature baits for bass, well to me they are basically the same thing - except the types of locations and ground are different. So all we needed to do was get Del in front of a few bass up an estuary.

Which has been easier said than done when you’ve got these current conditions! Steam has literally been leaking out of my ears these past few days as I have tried to come up with logical bass fishing solutions because so many places I would have loved to take Del have been out. I went for a run early yesterday morning, and by the time I was back I had come up with what I hoped was a decent plan which took into account the strong, and getting much stronger, southerly winds with torrential rain later in the day.

I had told Del not to go buying loads of lures because I have got plenty here, so we jumped in the Epic Berlingo yesterday morning and headed out. I opened my lure box up and asked Del which creature bait he fancied the most, and immediately he went for one of those fantastic looking Z-Man ProCrawZ 3.5'' lures. Why this particular one I asked? Because it’s his favourite wrasse lure by miles, and he is absolutely convinced that the larger than average “claws” help attract the wrasse that bit more with how much they flap around in the water. Interestingly when I nailed my first bass earlier this year on a lure that wasn’t the (killer) MegaBass Sleeper Craw, it was on the Z-Man ProCrawZ 3.5'' (check here). It was also interesting that the first thing Del did when I gave him the lure from my box was to insert a rattle into it with one of those clever Z-Man Rattle-Snaker tools which he carries with him all the time for his wrassing back home (check here for some details). One of those fantastic size 3/0 Eagle Claw Lazer Sharp L12 Weedless hooks and a 5g Berkley Fusion cheb weight was the end gear to present the creature bait.

Where I had decided to take us fishing was very sheltered in the strong winds. A while later when we had moved around a corner which opened up some stunning and very quiet estuary ground, I heard the yelp you always want to hear - “I’m in”! I had rigged Del up with the Favorite Skyline '25 862M 8'6'' 8-24g lure rod (review to come, how the hell does this company make so many awesome lure rods?), and I could see straight away that it was a decent bass. I got down to the water’s edge and grabbed one of the darkest looking bass I have ever seen. Easily 5lb+, and as delighted as Del was with his first bass on a creature bait, I cannot tell you how thrilled I was in so many ways to see that fish come in. I can’t pretend that I would have been out fishing much with the conditions we have been getting these past few days, but we are out trying, and we managed to tick a big one off the list yesterday morning. Outfriggingstanding!

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.